Upcoming Projects

This is a list of some works in progress that should see the light of day in something like the order they are listed here.

* El Pulpo

This new album differs from my last, Spare Parts, in several ways. The songs were written with keyboards and drums/percussion rather than acoustic guitars, and their lyrics focus on politics rather than on relationships. (To the extent that those two can be disentangled.) It’s a collaborative project with producer Scott Solter and over a baker’s dozen guest musicians, including longtime Shrimper pal Peter Hughes. I will be releasing this album under the moniker John Davis & The Cicadas, the name of the live band that coalesced out of the process of making this album. ( The current Cicadas lineup features Peter, Wendy Allen, and Rob Chamberlain, as well as Alex Lazara, Justin Blatt, and Dylan Thurston, who came on board after the album was recorded.)

“What is life? It is a process of eating and being eaten.” – Maha Ghosananda

The lyrical focus of the record came out of reading Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel, and has to do with a satirical look at the politics of the food industry. There are songs about coffee, coca-cola, corn syrup, soy, prisons, hospitals, supermarkets, guns, cows, pizza, bananas, Minor Keith, NAFTA, drugs, strikes, aircraft carriers, muzak, Syngenta, drones, Heptachlor, derivatives trading, and so forth. The details were picked up from books like Stuffed & Starved, Empie’s Workshop by Greg Grandin, Silent Spring by Rachel Caron, For God, For Country and For Coca-Cola and Uncommon Grounds by Mark Pendergrast, Inevitable Revolutions by Walter Lafeber, Blue Covenant by Maude Barlow, India Divided by Vedanda Shiva, and the Blowback Trilogy by Chalmers Johnson.

Above is a clip of Raj Patel talking about the soy plantations in Brazil that supply chains like McDonald’s. (Patel refers to Chicken McNuggets as “soy with wings” in the book, because McD’s uses soy to fatten up their fowl.) There’s a song called A Soja E Rei on the record based on what he wrote about this commodity in Stuffed and Starved. If you click on the clip that comes up in the middle of the screen when this one is over, you can see Patel riff on the topic of supermarkets. The lyrics for one of the tunes are based on the great chapter in Stuffed and Starved about the history of these culinary air craft carriers. The way they operate is much more Orwellian than you might think. Did you know that supermarkets do extensive research on the number of beats per minute the music they play should have in order to maximize sales? I’m surprised Pro Tools doesn’t have a prefab BPM setting at the exact level Ralph’s, Shaws and Publix prefer, one suited for the kind of music you hear during the great final scene from the film The Hurt Locker in which the protagonist looks dazed while gazing across rows of cereals boxes in the aisle of a supermarket after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq.

Another source I read while writing the songs was s a novel called The Chronicle Of The Seven Sorrows by Patrick Chamoiseau. It chronicles the downfall of a neighborhood of vibrant outdoor vegetable markets in Fort-de-France, the capital of Maritinique, at the hands of supermarket chains that came into the area after the former French colony became an overseas department of France in 1946. It’s a good example of the broken promises of nominal decolonization. When I lived in Paris as an exchange student in 1991, it was the first time I had ever shopped at an open air market on a regular basis. It was awesome. I almost never went to a supermarket during the 6 months I spent there – but I almost never went to street markets anymore once I got back to the US. It was a lot harder to find farmer’s markets and CSA’s in the US in those days than it is now.

* Pure Night Plus

This forthcoming CD will compile early analog releases that were never released digitally, either physically or virtually:

Pure Night – originally came out on Shrimper as a vinyl LP in an edition of 750 copies.

R.I.P., D.I.Y. – originally came out on Shrimper as a 7″ 5 song EP, (or “EB” as it was misspelled at the time!)

River Boat / Into the Sunset / Six Shooters & Canyons / Bandit Kitty EP – 4 song side of a 7″ originally released on the Roadcone label. Other side of original release featured songs by Sandra Bell.

Stars and Songs – First full cassette release on Shrimper from 1993.

I Had a Dream I Was Down By the Ocean – First song I released on Shrimper, from the Hardcore Acoustic cassette compilation.

There will be a few outtakes, as well as liner notes by myself and Adam Green of Moldy Peaches.

* Gnawing on the Bone

Basic tracks have been recorded for this new instrumental album, which was originally conceived of as a collection of acoustic guitar instrumentals in the vein of John Fahey and Derek Bailey. Dennis Callaci of Shrimper suggested I make a record like this after I sent him a tape of instrumental guitar pieces. His original thought was to include it as a second bonus CD packaged with the reissue of Pure Night mentioned above, so I wouldn’t feel to self-conscious about measuring up to Fahey’s ghost or perhaps those of solo jazz records by folks like Anthony Braxton. (And you thought indie labels didn’t do A&R!) But then I decided to do it as a separate record because I wanted to make a slick music video for it with Hype Williams based on the following clip I found online:

I watched the whole thing – but I never got my 5 bucks, which the person who posted this on youtube promised to pay to anyone who watched this clip to the bitter end. Oh well.

Also, on the Folk Implosion front, reissues are in the works for our material from the Kids soundtrack, as well as vinyl repressing of our early 4 track material.

Hi John. I missed you man. Got a lot of your music in my collection and it still gets played to this day. Room for Space w/ Dennis Callaci is one of my fav’s. Musically you’ve been an influence to me too. Who says one needs a lot of structure when you want to make a rock song; experimental or otherwise. Just wanted to say thanks and I hope to meet you someday….
All the best.
Jamie Franklin

Wonderful to hear that you’re making new music and looking forward to reissues of the old. I loved one part lullaby and went looking for your solo albums (not an easy task ten years ago in Belgium). Later on discogs helped me; found them, loved them!
Keep me posted please and tanx-a-lot for your music!